


"I can't stop thinking about you."

by drugstoreperfume



Series: drabble prompts for the exy kids [4]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, drabble 4 of the alice drabbles' drabble prompts, hints at the josten-minyard rivalry, this was meant to be 500 fucking words, well as much as these boys can handle anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 22:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15895287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drugstoreperfume/pseuds/drugstoreperfume
Summary: Neil and Andrew are on separate teams, and Neil has to come to terms with how much he truly misses Andrew when the distance is so far.





	"I can't stop thinking about you."

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Neil's first year after leaving Palmetto, and Andrew's second. Andrew plays for a team in L.A., and Neil plays for a team in Chicago. The Minyard-Josten rivalry has only just been hinted at, not actually begun.
> 
> enjoy my fluffy mess!!

“When am I seeing you again after this?”

Andrew put his toiletries bag into his duffel, not looking at Neil. “We next have our break around November.”

Neil grimaced. “My team are training through November.”

Andrew met his eyes in the mirror – under the bathroom lights, the high points of Andrew’s cheekbones seemed to beam, pale and gaunt. Neil was cast in shadow behind, cross-legged on the bed. “All the way through November?”

“Yeah,” Neil said. “We start in mid-October, where we’re against Matt’s team, and we have _Kevin’s_ team at the end of November so we’re training all the way through.”

Andrew nodded, face unchanging, as he zipped his duffel.

Fingers twitching with anxiety, Neil couldn’t help but say what was on his mind – what had been on his mind since a few nights previous. “So, we’re not seeing each other until December, then.”

“We play each other in early December, and then we have one night on the road, and then we stay at Renee’s,” Andrew said, relaying the plan perfectly.

Bitterness rose in Neil that he couldn’t push down. “We have one night together?”

Andrew turned his body and looked at him.

“And then Renee’s, and then…” Neil trailed off, looking at Andrew expectantly.

Andrew hesitated for a moment, seeming to wait for Neil to finish his own sentence, before completing it with, “Then back to our teams.”

“Right.” Neil barked a laugh. “So it’s a text a week from you for four months, a night alone with you somewhere down the motorway, a week with the Foxes and then gone again for God knows how long.”

“Are you angry about something?” Andrew asked, raising an eyebrow.

Neil felt a little ashamed for not being blunt and direct, but he felt too angry – at circumstances, at _himself_ – to stop. “No. I just - I just hardly get to see you.”

Andrew put his obnoxiously blue and white duffel, undoubtedly heavy with his L.A. training gear, on the bed next to Neil and, for a moment, looked amused. “Is Neil getting needy?”

Anger shot through Neil. He turned to look Andrew in the eyes. “Fuck you, Minyard,” he snapped.

The amusement died from Andrew’s face as he replied, “What’s the problem, Neil? We just did four months apart. Hell, we did six when you were still at Palmetto. What’s the problem?”

“We don’t talk!” Neil took his phone from his pocket. “You gave me this to talk to me but we don’t fucking call each other!”

“What are you expecting from me?” Andrew asked.

“You don’t give a fuck what my answer would be to that.”

Andrew gritted his teeth. “No,” he said, tense, “I don’t, because we aren’t anything.”

“Fucking –“ Neil stared at him with eyes wide, daring him to continue. “Fucking get over yourself. Look at how we are.”

“There isn’t a ‘we’ here.”

“There’s an ‘us’, right here, right now and we both fucking know it.”

Andrew’s jaw clenched hard, the muscle twitching in that infuriatingly appealing way Neil wouldn’t let himself focus on.

Neil continued, blood hot. “Just because this is still a ‘nothing’ to you doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to miss you -”

“Neil -”

“Andrew!” Neil threw his hands in the air helplessly. “I’m allowed to miss you!”

“That’s not how we are,” said Andrew. His eyes were deep-set with frustration.

“Oh, fuck that, Andrew. Whatever this is,” Neil said, gesturing between the two of them, “has been going on long enough that – I miss you, Andrew.”

Andrew didn’t reply.

“I miss you when you’re gone. I miss this – being with you. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Andrew’s shoulders were set with discomfort, but the pink flush to his face suggested he understood Neil completely. Neil certainly didn’t expect anything back, but he at least deserved to have Andrew know. He couldn’t pretend not to care. He knew Andrew cared too.

Andrew took a moment to compute before reaching for his duffel handle again. “I’ll call more.”

Neil bit back a sigh. Just getting his feelings out had made him feel slightly better, but he didn’t know how far he believed Andrew. They’d both be busy. “Okay,” Neil said, knowing he’d find a way.

“My flight’s in four hours,” Andrew said, pressing extra acid into the mention of a ‘flight’.

Neil nodded.

Again, Andrew hesitated, before asking, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Neil said.

Andrew made a rough growling noise at the back of his throat. “Yes or no?”

Tension Neil didn’t know he had, the tension of missing Andrew and the taut band of the impending distance between them, was released from him in a rush of breath that sounded like, “Yes.”

Duffel swung around, Andrew caught Neil’s jaw in a strong hand and pulled him in for a rough kiss. Everything distracting and meaningful and real was washed away, and Neil felt like he was floating. He welcomed not having to worry. Neil’s fingers tentatively went to Andrew’s belt loops, pulling him closer and imploring for more, his mind spinning the letters of his name around and around. The kiss seemed to stretch for days, weeks, even months; it seemed to stretch the distance between the two of them. Andrew, in that moment, felt as definite and permanent as the key imprint inked onto Neil’s shoulder blade, much kissed.

Andrew pulled away all too soon, his muscles tense with fighting the same urge Neil felt. All Neil wanted was to pull Andrew backwards onto the bed and fall apart with him. His mind was filled with the stale smell of an airport and the whirring of engines, and his mouth tasted sour.

“I have to leave now,” said Andrew.

“I’ll come to the airport with you,” said Neil. “I’ll drive you there -”

“I’m driving,” Andrew interrupted.

Neil could read through that: _You’re not coming_. Andrew was nervous. The car soothed what Neil could not. It was selfish, but Neil wished for a moment he could be the thing to take Andrew’s worries away. Neil swallowed his disappointment and managed to get out, “Call me when you land.”

Andrew said nothing. He picked up his duffel, took the car keys from the tray on the dresser, and headed out of the bedroom towards the exit.

Feeling a little bit like a wife seeing their husband off to war, Neil wrapped the spare blanket around his bare chest and followed Andrew out of the room if only to see him leave. Andrew didn’t turn around as he left, and Neil watched the muscles of his back through his t-shirt as he pulled the door shut behind him. The foundations of their home seemed to rock with the weight of Andrew’s absence – four months, and longer still until they were home together. Neil looked down at his blanket, joggers and socks ensemble and felt a little sorry for himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to get dressed yet. Instead, he said _fuck it_ to his Kevin-esque demonic trainer and rummaged for Chinese takeaway remainders and sachets of vegetarian miso soup paste.

A jog and two episodes of trashy reality TV later, Neil let himself think back to when he was younger, with his mother. Who had he ever needed before now? No – he still didn’t need anyone. But when he was younger he knew from the start that if something were to happen to his mother he’d move on. She told him to run, swim, get away first.

He’d burnt her body.

He’d never missed someone. When his mother was gone, he moved on with his life. He’d kept moving. He’d never let himself stay in one place too long.

Maybe this was what his mother was talking about. Staying meant missing, and missing meant pain.

Neil swallowed the urge to run – he’d been on a jog today already, and he didn’t need another one. Besides, where would he go? He couldn’t run to where Andrew was.

That thought stopped him too. He’d always run away. Now, he was running towards. That was a scary thought. Neil went back to the remains of his leftovers and tried not to think about that again.

 

 

Neil’s salvation came in the post just over a week later, two weeks until he would be flying to his team in Chicago. Since he left, he’d received two calls from Andrew, which were short but better than his usual one per week. However, practise hadn’t really started yet, so Neil didn’t expect much more from him. He tried to fill his ache with his demon trainer’s demon diet – _“We want you small, fit and fast so you can whip around that Minyard fucker three times over, you got me, Josten?”_   - and frequent calls to Matt, who was always happy to hear from him. But now, there was this. The box.

It was a large rectangular box, made of regular cardboard and shitty, shitty tape, with no name but a return address in Los Angeles. It was heavy, weighing Neil’s arms down. Confused, Neil lifted the hefty package onto the coffee table and got to work with a biro, struggling to cut through the messy taping. Eventually, Neil managed to saw through the box prison and retrieve the contents. Neil worked at pulling out the pieces of polystyrene until he reached something of substance – a moderately sized, heavy grey object. Neil lifted it from the box. It was a laptop.

Even more bewildered, Neil looked again into the box to find only more polystyrene. He upended the box to let the packing fall out of it. Amongst the falling polystyrene were a few pieces of paper. One, Neil saw, contained simple instructions on how to set up the laptop, which Neil would need, seeing as his previous computer had been 7 years old, bought second hand and had come close to exploding about a year previous, causing Andrew to insist it was thrown away. The other piece of paper, however, Neil recognised to contain Andrew’s handwriting - small, messy and pressed hard into the page:

_It’s a laptop. It has a webcam. Download Skype. A_minyard3_

Neil couldn’t hold back a wobbly smile as he got to work.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading my work! i know i complain a lot abt my work but i actually really like this one! how surprising is that!
> 
> its always so hard to write these boys having feelings but they really really do. i hope i havent made it too OoC,,, lemme know how u feel abt it bc i wanna get these boys right. please leave me a comment down below telling me what u thought of it!
> 
> thank u for supporting me!!


End file.
